As much as I adore homemade jam, I’ve always considered it an enormous gamble.  The more I invested in time and ingredients the higher were the odds I would end up with a runny syrup or a rubbery mass better suited for Gummi Bears than toast.  Perfect preserves eluded me.

Neither the old-fashioned cookbooks I inherited from my mom nor the new crop of canning guides and web sites were much help.   Most of their recipes relied on commercial pectin and called for specific amounts of sugar and fruit, stated in cups.  All advised checking whether the jam had set by watching it drip off a spoon or cling to a chilled plate — imprecise measures at best for the uninitiated.

Then I ran across Russ Parsons’ advice in the Los Angeles Times this summer and everything began to make sense.  He offered a simple ratio for making small batches of jam using equal weights of sugar and whatever fruit you have on hand.  Because you cook a limited amount of preserves at a time in a non-stick skillet, it’s easy to tell whether it’s ready just by watching the syrupy mixture become thick and glossy as you stir.  Flavors are also fresher. (more…)

When temperatures soar and appetites wilt, nothing is more appealing than a salad packed with cool, crisp greens.  Add a little protein and dinner is ready for the table.

This summer, I’m enamored with the pork tenderloin salad with warm strawberry dressing I found in “The Berry Bible,” by Janie Hibler.  Nominated for a James Beard award when it was first published in 2004, the cookbook is one of the books Amazon Encore is bringing back because customer reviews and other sources indicate they were overlooked and under-appreciated when they were first released. (more…)

Rhubarb, strawberries and cherries, oh my!

How I love this time of year, when my favorite fruits are in season.  (Let’s not quibble about rhubarb. It may be a vegetable, botanically speaking, but it cooks up like a fruit.)

I have no desire to spend hours in the kitchen fussing with this bounty, however.  A simple, old-fashioned crisp is just what’s called for when the days are long and the weather balmy.

Rhubarb is the star of this dessert.  Bright and sassy, its refreshingly sour flavor balances out all the sugar in the topping.  I like it paired with the soft, sweet flavors of ripe strawberries and cherries, but it works beautifully all by itself, too. A lively burst of fresh ginger adds character. (more…)

New York Times food columnist Mark Bittman always seems to have his finger on the pulse of how America cooks.  His encyclopedic book of pared-down recipes, “How to Cook Everything,” Wiley, 1998, long ago displaced the venerable “Joy of Cooking” as the everyday kitchen reference in our house.  My husband would be lost without it.

Now Bittman has joined the smart phone age with his nifty new iPhone app, “How to Cook Everything On the Go” ($4.99). I’m not going to give up my hardback version of his cooking bible anytime soon but I’m smitten with this clever bit of technical wizardry.  It has everything in the book and more in a to-go format that is much easier to search.

The shortcake pictured here is based on the simple scone recipe I found while browsing among the strawberry entries.   The ingredient list is short, the instructions are simple, and the results are delectable.  This may be the easiest, most tender and flaky scone I’ve ever made even though I switched out half of the white flour for whole wheat pastry flour.  Use a food processor and the scones are ready to bake before the oven has warmed up. (more…)

Summer is winding down and the stone fruit season is almost at an end.

Apricots are long gone. Peaches have passed their peak.  Still, plum lovers can rejoice. Some of the most complex and appealing varieties of this multi-faceted fruit are still flourishing.

Gorgeous elephant hearts, their lush burgundy flesh ready to burst out of pale purple skin, were irresistible at the Aptos farmers market last week.  Then Sunday I was seduced by cute little French prune plums, the original sugar plum, at the Live Oak farmers market.  Long before the dried version of the fruit became the butt of so many jokes that marketers changed the name to dried plums, they were a major cash crop in the orchards of Santa Clara Valley.  The French still treasure them, both fresh and dried, but they’re hard to find outside of farmers markets.

These extraordinary varieties taste nothing like supermarket plums, which usually are picked so early that their flavors never really develop.  They’re sweet but complex, much like a dessert wine.  The tart zing of the thin skin is fleeting and only adds to their interest.

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